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Have you ever purchased a ticket to your own event?
Question: "Isn't a thousand pages of info, a thousand ways to generate leads?"

An important lesson learned from Queen

Queen?!?! Like the band Queen? Yup! Like the band Queen. Here goes!

Queen_fan_club_website

On Sunday, the film Bohemian Rhapsody won 4 Academy Awards. The movie regales the adventures of the British band Queen as see through the eyes of Freddie Mercury.

It was 2002, and my friend Mike roped me in to helping with a unique project. The project was for the Official International Queen Fan Club website. Mike volunteered to redesign and rebuild their entire website. He also volunteered my services. Taking such a project is not something I normally do, but I decided to help a friend.

During that same time period, I was doing a bunch of website usability consulting. In short and in unprofessional terms, web usability makes sure a company's website doesn't suck. We ended up doing a usability audit on the Queen Fan Club website. There was a significant takeaway from the Queen project that I apply to every project today.

When we started the Queen project, there were over 200 pages of web content. The usability tests results showed that website visitors weren't engaging with content. Over 170 pages were chopped and condensed off the website. When we finished, there were less than 30 pages on the new web site. The result, a much tighter web site and better user experience.

The lesson from the Queen fan club is 100% applicable to any event website!

Too many event websites are bloated with useless content and far too many pages. If you don't believe me, check your Google Analytics. Look at average page views on your site and distribution of most visited pages. The data speaks for itself! Some client projects started at over 1,000 pages indexed in Google. And no ticket buyer I can think of is looking at 1,000 pages on an event website.

Honestly, with just a few rare exceptions, no event web site needs to be more than 10, maybe 15 pages! Do yourself and your website users a favor. Cut the excess page fat from your site. Your users get a better website experience and you’ll sell more tickets as a result.

Want to get more info on making your event website better? Check out the articles below:

Posted at 07:54 in Web Usability and Testing |

Tags: event website usability, marketing, promotion